Undefined Reality
by Ravena Kaiou
Summary: What is it that preys on the deepest recesses of the human mind...imagination? Or something far worse?
1. The First Victim

Undefined Reality  
CHAPTER 1 - The First Victim  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Author: Ravena Kaiou  
Email: KakyuuStarLt@aol.com  
Genre: Horror/Sci-fi  
Anime: Gundam Wing  
Rating: R  
Warnings: Violence, paranormality, OOC, language.  
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The rights to it belong to Sunrise Animation, Bandai, and a few other people I don't know about. The Teletubbies belong to the sick individual that created them...ewww. I want no part of them.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Duo Maxwell opened one eye and listened to the sounds of the cars passing by on the street thirteen stories below his apartment. Every so often, there was the sound of brakes squealing, which caused the braided boy to grimace. If those brakes didn't stop the metal monsters they were attached to in time...well, you could bet that he'd be forced to run downstairs and get the full story.  
  
But so was the life of a reporter.  
  
Just thinking that single sentence made Duo snicker. Was he truly a reporter? No. He was nothing but a worker for a small underground newspaper, which barely sold enough copies to keep the presses running. Late at night when he had trouble falling asleep, he would often wonder what dumbassed weirdo would spend the dollar-per-issue cover price to read stories about two-headed goats and how the Teletubbies and masturbation went hand -in-hand.  
  
With a yawn and a slight stretch, Duo swung his feet over the edge of his bed and threw on a pair of pants. No matter how hard he tried, he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Not tonight.  
  
As he shuffled into the small apartment kitchen, a wave of cold air hit him at full force.  
  
"What the fuck?" he cursed. He paid eight hundred dollars a month for an apartment that was barely above hellhole status in the middle of Queens, and now his air conditioner was acting up?  
  
The odd thing was, the discordant rumble of the air conditioning unit that Duo had learned to grow accustomed to over the years didn't penetrate the heavy night air. The traffic passing below had also come to a complete halt, it seemed.  
  
The reporter's violet eyes shifted nervously and came to rest on the bare lightbulb that hung above the card table in the middle of the kitchen, which was swinging back and forth in a 180-degree arc. The weak light that shone through the grimy glass flickered a few times, threatening to leave Duo standing alone in silent darkness.  
  
A stench that could rival the smell of rotten eggs pervaded his nostrils, causing him to gag. "God dammit!" he coughed, covering his nose with one hand and trying to wave the smell away with the other. "What died in here?!"  
  
As if to answer his question, the lightbulb flickered once, twice...then went off all together. The only source of light was gone.  
  
Duo closed his eyes and mumbled a prayer. "In the name of the Father--"  
  
"Get out," a hollow voice that sounded as if it was coming from the end of a tunnel hissed.  
  
"--and of the Son--" By now, he was beginning to forget the rest of the prayer. He clenched his chattering teeth and shut his eyes even tighter that they already were, trying to play off the fear that was coursing through his veins.  
  
A sharp sensation, like thousands of tiny knives, attacked the left side of Duo's face. His hand automatically flew to the afflicted area and explored it, then withdrew quickly as it felt a familiar, sticky substance.  
  
"Oh God," he moaned.  
  
There was the sound of a crash, a cry of pain, and the sound of heavy footsteps running away. Quickly.  
  
Once the nightmarish cacophony had subsided, the lightbulb snapped back on, and the familiar sounds of the street and his neighbor's sexual activities assaulted Duo's ears as they had before.  
  
In an attempt to clear his head, Duo blinked and promptly screamed in pain. The left side of his face was killing him...and why couldn't he see to the left?  
  
Panicked, he ran into the filthy bathroom and stared into the cracked glass. What stared back at him almost made him throw up.  
  
His left eye was missing, the blood that welled up in the empty socket streaming down through the mess of exposed muscle and bone that used to be his face. 


	2. Trouble At The Hospital

Undefined Reality  
CHAPTER 2 - Trouble at the Hospital  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Author: Ravena Kaiou  
Email: KakyuuStarLt@aol.com  
Genre: Horror/Supernatural  
Anime: Gundam Wing  
Rating: R  
Warnings: Violence, paranormality, OOC, language.  
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The rights to it belong to Sunrise Animation, Bandai, and a few other people I don't know about.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Dr. Catherine Bloom looked down at her patient's case file. "Name, Duo Maxwell," she read aloud. "Source of injury, assumed self-inflicted."  
  
The pretty redhead's grey eyes involuntarily flickered down to the bloodstained bandages that covered Duo's face. Plastic surgeons had frantically tried to repair what was left of his face, but chances were that the massive scarring would just make the whole situation as bad as it was when he first came in.  
  
She shuddered as she recalled the bloody pulp that had been lying on the gurney as the braided boy was rushed into the emergency room. To her, it was unthinkable that any human being could inflict such pain on themselves. No, Catherine Bloom sensed foul play. And in the case of this particular doctor, the Queens police usually found that enough grounds to start an investigation.  
  
Since anyone could remember, Catherine had been afflicted with strange headaches and visions. Test after CAT-scan could offer nothing even remotely close to an explanation. There was no tumour, no abnormalities that could be seen.  
  
It wasn't until one of the radiologists pulled the then-five-year-old Catherine aside and asked her to describe what exactly she was seeing that her family began to put the pieces of the puzzle together.  
  
"Catherine? Is there anyone in the room who you don't know?" the radiologist whose name, quite unfortunately, had been lost in Catherine's memory had asked.  
  
Catherine nodded. "There's a lady. A pretty lady in a paper dress..." the young girl paused and stared at the corner intently, then resumed what she was saying.   
"...and she's crying because no one talks to her."  
  
The radiologist was taken aback. "Describe her to me," he instructed.  
  
The little girl looked back to the corner. "She's got black curly hair...and dark eyes. Really dark eyes. She looks like a Barbie doll," she answered.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," Catherine's mother scolded. "You're making up stories. There's no one else in the room."  
  
But the radiologist wasn't so sure. Dumbfounded, he stumbled over to his old cases and pulled out a file with a patient photo attached to it by a metal paperclip.   
  
"Does she look familiar?" he asked.  
  
Catherine squealed with delight. "Hi, Lady!" she said to the picture.  
  
The radiologist pulled Catherine's mother aside. "This lady she's talking about is Lena Barton," he whispered. "We lost her to a rare form of cancer just last week."  
  
Catherine's headaches had never been formally diagnosed. The explanation offered by the radiologist was that she had clairvoyant abilities, since nothing had showed up on the CAT scan film. "Just get used to the fact that she'll be seeing more than you think she is," he advised her parents.  
  
And so now Catherine the psychic had found her way to St. John of Mercy's Hospital in the middle of Queens as the attending ER physician. Every patient that she encountered on her daily trek through the sterile white hallways was met with extreme scrutiny. All she needed was for someone to find her having a conversation with someone they couldn't see. Losing her job over something like that was not what she had in mind for her future.  
  
A slight groan from Duo brought her out of her thoughts. The anesthesia was beginning to wear off, and chances were that her patient was going to want some painkillers.  
  
"What happened?" Duo asked, his words slurred because he couldn't move the left side of his face.  
  
"Perhaps you should tell me, Mr. Maxwell," Catherine said, sitting on the very edge of the hospital bed and being sure not to impair the function of any of the various machines that were hooked into his body.  
  
Duo grimaced as he struggled to move his jaw. "Don't know," he confessed. "Someone was in my apartment...they told me to get out, then my face started hurting...and this happened."  
  
"Who was in the apartment?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Well then...what happened before your face started hurting?"  
  
Here, Duo squinched up his good eye in thought. "It got really cold...and then the light started swinging and flickering, then there was this smell..."  
  
A little bell inside Catherine's head went off. "Do you believe in ghosts?" she blurted out.  
  
Duo laughed, then flinched as a sensation of pain raced up and down his face.  
"Nah, lady, I don't believe in ghosts. Once we're dead, we're dead, that's it. We don't come back."  
  
Catherine's expression turned grim. "All right then. Mr. Maxwell, you ought to get some rest. Try to avoid speaking as much as possible."  
  
Duo offered what became half a smile because of the bandage covering the left side of his face. "Will do. And you can call me Duo."  
  
Dr. Bloom gathered up her charts. "As you wish, Mr. Maxwell," she said, then walked out of the room.  
  
"You know, you really ought to be careful how you talk in front of patients," a sarcastic voice said. "One of these days it'll get you so deep in shit that you couldn't get back out if you had a snow shovel."  
  
Dr. Bloom's pretty jawline tightened. "Early for your shift, aren't you, Dr. Chang?" she said through clenched teeth.  
  
The Chinese doctor smirked. "Am I early? Or are you late getting off?"  
  
Instinctively, Catherine looked at the clock. Her shift had ended half an hour ago. She had been so involved in Duo Maxwell that she had totally lost track of the time.  
  
"A hell of a way to get overtime," Dr. Chang snickered. "Trying to push your paranormal crap on the weaker-minded."  
  
The redhead smirked. "Well then...since I'm off shift, we need a lower G.I. in room 662A," she said, shoving a stack of charts into Chang's waiting hands.  
  
"Dammit!" he cursed as his coworker walked to the main desk to turn in her badge and coat for the night.  
  
"Good night, Dr. Chang," Catherine called out in a singsong voice as she stepped through the double doors and disappeared into the night.  
  
As Chang passed by Duo Maxwell's hospital room, he peered in out of sheer curiosity. One of the nurses on duty was changing his bandages, and what the handsome doctor saw almost made him retch.  
  
"Maybe you've got something there, Bloom. No one could do that to themselves," he said to the empty air around him.  
  
The hallway suddenly turned ice cold. "Damn air conditioning," Chang muttered.   
  
"Good evening, Dr. Chang," a hollow female voice floated on the air.  
  
"Good e--" The raven-haired doctor stopped dead in his tracks and turned three shades paler than he actually was, his mouth gaping open, mouthing screams that had no sound.  
  
A woman wearing a bloodstained hospital gown was hanging from the ceiling, a noose tightened around her neck and her bulged-out eyes staring directly at him.  
  
Dr. Chang finally found his voice, his scream echoing through the tiled hallways of the hospital. 


	3. Revenge

Undefined Reality  
CHAPTER 3 - "Revenge"  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Author: Ravena Kaiou  
Email: KakyuuStarLt@aol.com  
Genre: Horror/Supernatural  
Anime: Gundam Wing  
Rating: R  
Warnings: Violence, paranormality, OOC, language.  
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The rights to it belong to Sunrise Animation, Bandai, and a few other people I don't know about.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
What happened in the next hour or so was all a blur to Dr. Wu Fei Chang. After he had unwittingly found the woman's body, the police had been called out to investigate. Which was why lieutenant Lucrezia Noin was now writing down various bits of information as the Chinese man shakily tried to reiterate what exactly went on.  
  
"Now, tell me what happened before you saw her," Noin said gently.  
  
As if trying to erase the vision from his mind, Wu Fei closed his eyes tightly and shook his head. "Someone said 'Good evening, Dr. Chang' and I turned to see who it was. Then I saw...her..." His words trailed off as a shiver raced through his body.  
  
Lucrezia's blue eyes had an odd sharpness in them. Since she had very first stepped into St. John of Mercy's Hospital, an uneasy feeling had been haunting her.  
  
"Lieutenant!" Patrolman Milliardo Peacecraft came running up to the two. "We got a positive ID on the stiff."  
  
The attractive lieutenant narrowed her eyes. "Nice terminology," she snapped. "Did they teach you that in the academy?"  
  
"Sorry, Lieutenant Noin," Milliardo apologized. He had never been able to understand why his commanding officer came with such a great respect for the dead, but he figured it best to humour her whenever possible.  
  
Noin smiled sweetly. "Now, you said you've found our victim's name?"  
  
Milliardo nodded and handed her a chart filled to bursting with papers of various natures. "The victim's name is Sylvia Noventa, age 16, formally diagnosed with a severe case of schizophrenia about two years ago. She was being held in the psych ward," he explained as the woman scrutinized the case history attached to the front cover with metal brads.  
  
"If she was being held in the psych ward, then how the hell did she get downstairs and halfway across the building?" Noin asked to no one in particular.  
  
Officer Peacecraft sighed. "Sylvia was dying from a rare form of brain cancer which probably could have accounted for her mental status at the time of death," he suggested. "An attendant in psych claimed that she was being transferred to radiology when she became violent and uncooperative. She broke free and ran down the east wing hallway. As for her means of suicide," at this he held up a knotted mess of intravenous cords that had been hastily made into a noose, "we can only assume that she grabbed something out of storage and continued on down here."  
  
Noin's eyes flashed briefly. It was a bit of a stretch, but it was the only rational explanation they had.  
  
"Lieutenant? Lieutenant, are you all right?" Dr. Chang's voice echoed in Noin's mind.   
  
Blinking and snapping back to the real world, Lieutenant Noin cleared her throat and closed the chart. "Yes, I'm fine. I think we have all we need for tonight. Thank you for your help, Dr. Chang," she said.  
  
Wu Fei nodded. "Thank you for coming so quickly," he returned.  
  
Milliardo turned and walked out the double doors, on his way to squad car 54 so that he and his partner could hopefully return to their homes and get some sleep.   
  
"Dr. Chang, would it be all right if I looked into a few more things here?" she asked. "I think we're missing a piece of the puzzle."  
  
The Chinese doctor's face hardened. He had been thinking the exact same thing. With the rash of odd occurrences that had been going on, it did seem as if they were overlooking something important. "Go ahead," he said, waving his hand dismissively, then turning his coat and badge in at the desk and leaving for the safety of his own apartment.  
  
Satisfied, Noin clicked on her portable radio. "54 to car, 54 to car, do you copy?" she said into the microphone.  
  
"54, this is car, I copy. What's your 20?" the radio crackled.  
  
"Get your ass back in here. We've got more work to do."  
  
"Awwww...10-4."  
  
A few moments later, Milliardo came trekking back in through the doors. "What's the deal? Aren't we going home yet?" he demanded a bit crankily.  
  
"Don't get your panties in a twist," Noin retorted. "We'll leave once we find what I'm looking for."  
  
"What ARE you looking for?"  
  
Noin paused. "I don't know yet," she answered. "I just don't know."  
  
About three hours later, Milliardo found himself in the psych ward's records storage area, flipping through filing cabinet after filing cabinet of patient charts. The names were all beginning to run together when he looked at them. "Noventa, Sylvia...Septum...Otto...Mueller...Alex..." he droned under his breath.   
  
Then he noticed something odd. Each chart had a small orange sticker in the lower left-hand corner.  
  
"Hey, Lieutenant?" he called. "Check this out, I think I found something."  
  
But no answer came from the heavy darkness of the room.  
  
To avoid raising questions, the duo had decided to sneak into the records room and use flashlights rather than flood the small space with fluorescent light. Now patterns of dust angels danced like lost souls in the weak beam that streamed from his Maglite, and, as he bounced it around the room, he realized that Noin had disappeared.  
  
"Lucrezia? Lucrezia, where are you?" he asked, trying to downplay the fear in his voice. He desperately tried to force the strange story of Duo Maxwell's injuries that he had heard the doctors talking about in the hallway out of his mind. And the image of the late Sylvia Noventa...  
  
When he had walked through the doors of the hospital and turned the corner, Sylvia Noventa had been waiting for him. Her cold, dead eyes seemed to penetrate his skull, they were still so full of fear, anger, and sorrow. In one so young as she was, it seemed a waste. Nothing like a normal sixteen-year-old should have looked.  
  
But she wasn't a normal sixteen year old, he reminded himself. Sylvia was a sick girl.  
  
As if to punctuate his last thought, the doorknob to the records room rattled.   
  
Milliardo jumped, then berated himself for being startled so easily. If the boys from the academy could've seen that little display, he would've been laughed off of the force. It was probably Noin, coming back from wherever she had been.  
  
But the door didn't swing open, it just kept rattling in an almost rhythmic fashion.  
The patrolman couldn't tear his gaze away from the vibrating brass sphere. It was almost like it was hypnotizing him...  
  
A shrill scream interrupted his thoughts. A very familiar shrill scream.  
  
"Noin?!" he called out as he rushed to the door, whose knob had stopped its motion. "Noin, I'm coming!"  
  
He frantically twisted the doorknob, then withdrew his hand in terror as he felt a warm, sticky liquid spread over his palm. Even in the weak light that came from his flashlight, he could see the deep, forbidden crimson that was characteristic of blood.  
  
"Shit!" he cried out.  
  
Suddenly the sound of a shot fired from a .37 Magnum rang out in the darkness. Shortly after, another one made its presence known...then another...and another....  
  
Four shots in all, and Milliardo couldn't do a damn thing about it.  
  
A heavy, unsettling silence fell over the entire scene, and brought with it excruciating cold. As Milliardo's breast rose and fell with each breath he took, little puffy white clouds of smoke swirled out from between his lips.  
  
"Shit," Milliardo repeated under his breath. "Shit, shit shit shit..."  
  
An unseen force hurled him against one of the metal filing cabinets. The officer cried out in pain as the hard handle of the top drawer thrust itself into his spine.   
  
"Who are you?!" he demanded between the reverberating slaps that came across his face. "What do you want?!"  
  
"Revenge," a female voice hissed, its airy echoes bouncing off of every available surface in the room. To Milliardo, it seemed that the voice came from all directions at once rather than a single place.   
  
"Revenge," it said again as a stinging sensation ran throughout the man's body. It felt like Milliardo's blood had been replaced with pure hydrochloric acid.  
  
"Ahhhh!" the officer cried out as he fell to the floor and writhed, trying to quell the intensity of the pain.  
  
And as suddenly as it had begun...everything stopped.  
  
The handsome blonde man opened one eye and stared at the ceiling. Nothing seemed out of place to him. Was all of that screaming and shooting his imagination?  
  
A small voice in the back of his mind told him otherwise.  
  
He hastily got to his feet and picked up his flashlight as he burst out of the records room, noting how the doorknob had suddenly fixed itself. "Noin!" he screamed.   
  
"Noin!"  
  
As he played the beam around the now-dark reception area of the ward, a trickle of red captured his attention.  
  
Breathing heavily out of fear and anticipation of what he was about to find, Milliardo moved the beam up from the floor slowly, inch by inch.  
  
Once he saw what was on the wall, he felt like screaming again.  
  
Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin's bloody corpse was held to the wall by a scalpel jabbed through her torn throat, scarlet arterial blood pumping profusely from the various gashes that adorned her naked body. Four gaping gunshot wounds patterned themselves over her pale, still chest.  
  
And the horror was not over then.  
  
Next to her, written in what seemed to be her own blood, was a single word.  
  
"REVENGE." 


End file.
